After Tornado Bruce ripped through Panthy’s Garden in the fall of 2010, the head of my robotic owl S.T.E.V.E. became the focus of a nation-wide head hunt.

His service was short and came with mixed results, but I respected his hustle deeply. When activated, he literally never stopped hooting, which if nothing else, showed real fire.

Flyers went up, tips came streaming in, many a night’s sleep was lost. The streets were littered with BBQ’s, deck furniture and downed trees, but nowhere was the head of my sweet over-hooting owl.

Until I spotted it in my neighbors backyard, staring blankly up at me. Not more than two minutes later I was ringing their buzzer.

“Hi, uh, I’m your neighbor from next door, and I have this owl on my roof. A plastic owl. His head flew off and I’m pretty sure it’s in your backyard. Could you go grab it for me?” Skeptical, she disappeared back into her apartment and returned a few minutes later.

She never opened the wrought iron security door and I don’t blame her. She handed me S.T.E.V.E.’s head through the metal bars. “Thank you!”

Poster Download Here (PDF)

Take notice, S.T.E.V.E. is in the motherlovin’ house. I took one look at his barely flexible neck and terrifying gaze and immediately thought of Batman, Michael Keaton Batman, sitting high up on a Gotham perch, regulatin’.  See what I’m saying?!

I loaded him up with batteries, strapped him to the chimney and hit the switch: ON.

Head rotating slowly, with as much confidence as a fat plastic owl can muster, S.T.E.V.E. took his first defensive gaze around Panthy’s… and beyond. And never.stopped.hooting. No doubt, he’s eager to bring justice to Panthy’s Garden. But I had to slow his roll, his justice will kill those batteries in less than an hour. Might need some fine tuning on those motion sensors.

As I wait patiently for S.T.E.V.E. to come along and restore law and order to my garden, I gotta fight the good fight, 15 minutes a day, just before work, as I sip down some coffee. Doing this old man patrol, I cruise the garden, squinting at the sun through my glasses, scratching at my ridiculous bed head, wondering what hell went down since the previous morning. Sometimes I mutter the F word, which is fuck. Other times I smile groggily, holding a single ripe product of Panthy’s Garden. 50% of it goes directly in my mouth, right then and there.

The good news first. On my morning patrol I got these! One purple beauty bell pepper, some cherry tomatoes and the first of those Super Snow White tomatoes. They look good right? Thank you, I couldn’t agree more.

It’s not much but it almost makes the heartache of a demented, partly rotted tomato worth the trouble. These are damn fine. The cherries especially. Bout the size of a grape, these lil guys are super sweet and have a nice lil pop to em.

Now for the bad news. I noticed what looked like little tiny poops on the leaves of one of my tomato plants. I’ve never looked so closely, for so long at anything in my life. Not even when I got caught looking up the skirt of a mannequin at Filene’s when I was five.

On close inspection I noticed some little chewed holes in the leaves. Then… I saw a fat, disgusting green caterpillar, hanging out, taking a dump on leaves, having himself a leisurely meal. Must be nice… Not even S.T.E.V.E. could’ve stopped this! He looks like a branch! Nature, you goddamn little devil, you’ve done it again.

Here’s the part you don’t read to the kids. I took his little glow worm ass, yanked him from his meal and put him in a plastic water tray, because smashing him on the deck would make my deck gross. I looked around for the right murder weapon as he wiggled around stupidly, not knowing what was about to happen.

Garden shears? I’m no savage man, c’mon now. Greasy BBQ spatula I left up here over the weekend? Tempting. Eat him Bear Grylls style? (See 0:53 please) Not a good look, bro.

I killed him with the very PINE BARK NUGGET I scooped him out of the pot with. Like serving the detective the very frozen pork chop I killed the lady with! Nobody would ever find out!



Then, I plucked his friends, one by one, from their little snack perches. And they met the same sudden, gooey fate at the business end of a single PBN. It felt great and horrible. I stared around after I did the deed, my glasses having slid to the end of my sweaty nose. I felt a little like Michael Douglas in Falling Down. The F word was  muttered, lives had been snuffed out, and all before I’d even left for work. Honestly, I’m sorry you have to see this side of me.